Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Last night, the roads were jammed with traffic; additional buses, cabs, autos, and most of all people on foot trudging home. I went out for a while, and the first thing that struck me was how quiet it was. No horns. No engine sounds. Nobody swearing on the roads. There was just an expectant silence, people standing or walking sombrely in groups.

The panic is... gone. I wasn't here in 1993, but I don't see this going out of control like then. It's calm, but it's a directed calm. People are waiting for a response from the administration.

The trains are running again; the Western line was back in action from late night (partially) to completely by the morning. Traffic looks normal; the Harbour side is ok, Central was slightly crowded around Sion hospital and Western looks all right as well; I guess a lot of people are choosing to stay at home. But there's still a very healthy number of people out, on the roads, in offices, at work.

There's a sense of connect. Every time I see someone I know or recognize, I get an SMS... it's one more thing we share. We Survived Bombay. Again.

Just like there's a different sense of any IMs or mails coming from out of Bombay; a sense of you-out-there, compared to the us-in-here feeling I get from Bombayites.

That's it for now, let's see how the day develops. I'm putting in a couple of links in case someone comes across them searching...

The above links come from the Mumbai Help Wiki; I haven't been able to verify all of them, but it's being updated fairly regularly, and if you find something that's incorrect, go ahead and edit it. You'll be helping out a lot of people.

6 comments:

Its nice to see Bombay bounces back to normalcy so fast. But I read an article in The Telegraph here by Shobha De, and I'd like to share her views. They are definitely worth a mention in all this.

She argues that Mumbaiites are utterly in the wrong for going back to normal so fast. In mourning of those who died, whose families were torn apart, the city should not come back to normal. In defiance of the terrorist organizations, it should not come to normal.

Steps should be taken, voices should be raised, and vehement measures taken to ensure no one has the nerve to undertake such dastardly acts against our all too forgiving city.

We should not overtly glorify the passivity of Mumbai residents, or blindly praise their ability to make their lives as before again. It is not a healthy sign, when people simply forget what has happened and move on.

The rescue efforts conducted by civilians should be lauded and each one of them should be awarded I say. But the same enthusiasm should be shown by us to safeguard our Commercial Capital. No one should dare do such a thing again.